Part Three: The Raiders Learn Their Craft
If the initial Allied efforts were fruitless, so were the first weeks at war for the German raiders. It would be two weeks before they caught another prize after the unfortunate Matheran, though this may have been because they chose less travelled routes as their hunting grounds. By 15 August, only three ships were sunk or captured, and of these, the SS Diplomat, was recaptured by HMAS Sydney and her prize crew from Emden taken prisoner. The German naval forces always behaved with great chivalry to the captured crews of their prizes, but discovered that taking a prize could be a double-edged sword. First, while the prize ship was useful as a collier or as a prison for captured mariners, it encumbered the raiders should they have to show their heels, which is how Diplomat was recaptured. Secondly, every prize crew detached from a ship’s complement risked undermining the efficiency of that ship, and indeed, the German ships were generally superior to their adversaries in training and skill, so this was not an advantage lightly to be dispensed with.
Even when fortunate enough to capture a merchant with full coal bunkers, the raider captain, who was always thinking of his own dwindling coal stocks, had a dilemma. Did he put out fenders and try to coal at sea, with the risk of damage to his hull? Or did he try and find a secluded cove and hope that he could take the necessary two to four days of laborious work to transfer coal from ship to ship? Sometimes the Germans got away with it, but Emden almost came to disaster when she was discovered in the act of coaling in early September.
Captain Max Loof of Koenigsberg
Once he established himself athwart the Bay of Bengal trade routes, Kapitan Loof of Koenigsberg showed considerable ingenuity in managing his prizes. On August 20th he captured the SS Mersey Girl, with a load of cattle bound for Singapore. Finding a secluded beach on the Arrakan coastline, where he was unbothered by allied warships for some weeks, his crew and their captives regularly feasted on barbecued beef and bathed in the warm waters. As Loof remarked later on, “That was a very pleasant part of the war for us”.
Eitel Friedrich’s Mundt wrote that these first weeks were very frustrating, as their scant prey largely consisted of small sailing ships carrying unremarkable cargoes of grains and textiles. After encountering the old sailing ship Gullwing, he recalled joking: “Sailing ships! Sailing ships! At this rate we can cut down their masts, bring them aboard, and turn Der Alte Friedrich into a clipper ship!” Thierichens acidly remarked that at least the textiles could make curtains for the wardroom. The one advantage that Eitel Friedrich enjoyed was that as a converted passenger liner, she had room for captives. Indeed, when the Russians finally ran her to ground, they freed prisoners from six ships and many nations.
Usually the raiders practised the techique of turning away wrath with soft words and kid gloves. One exception was when Koenigsberg encountered the American sailing vessel SS Chauncey in the Bay of Bengal on 18 August. Her master, a rock ribbed Yankee skipper, took umbrage to being inspected and rudely declined Captain Loof’s offer of dinner, which made the German skipper lose his temper and aggressively search the American vessel before letting her go. The Yankee captain loudly protested this treatment to the British authorities when he reached Bombay, and had Royal Navy Intelligence been more efficient, the whereabouts of Koenigsberg might have been determiend earlier thanks to this indignant American.
The gold standard for chivalry was maintained throughout the campaign by the officers and men of Emden, who quickly became media darlings. In early October she captured the passenger ship SS St Osmund and detained four Australia-bound RN officers, including Commander the Rt Hon Sykes-Willoughby. Before he and other captives were finally released, their captors entertained them with a musical variety show (the Emden’s captain and crew were particularly fond of dramatics and musicals). Once he reached Manila, Sykes-Willoughby told the press that the Germans were "Dashed fine fellows … and a pity we shall sink them and kill the lot. A shame, really, they are such good singers”. Indeed, the Emden’s fame was such that when the crew of Nurnberg briefly detained the passenger ship City of Adelaide on October 13th, they pretended to be from Emden, thus concealing their own identity and putting more heat and light on their comrades. When Captain Muller of Emden read of this in a captured newspaper, he joked to his officers that “We are everywhere, even where we are not!”.
All in all, by the time Emden, the sole survivor of Von Spee’s squadron, fled the Pacific in late October, the German raiders had accounted for 29 merchant ships, totalling roughly 230,000 tons. While there was some considerable disruption to Allied trade between South Africa and South America, the panic was relatively short lived, and the cost to Germany in ships and crews made this at most a Pyrrhic victory. One can only imagine what a difference a sailor of Von Spee’s calibre would have made had he and his ships been part of the High Seas Fleet, and could perhaps have exercised his skill at Jutland.
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